Earlier today Elon Musk shared the news that their Model S Plaid had set a new time around the benchmark track for performance driving, the Nürburgring. Tesla’s refreshed Model S in Plaid spec has set an official full lap time of 7:35.579.
To put this in perspective, the fastest time on record is 6:38.835, achieved by the Porsche 911 GT2 RS. While Porsche has the top spot, their electric alternative, the Taycan managed 7 minutes and 42 seconds.
While the outright record may take a Roadster with the SpaceX package, the Plaid Model S, is fairly unique among the top ranking record holders. After setting record laps, you could then proceed to pickup the family in the 4-door production sedan and go pickup groceries from your local supermarket.
Something else worth considering is the price tag of these vehicles. The Tesla Model S Plaid has a driveaway price of A$231,434 and while that’s an awful lot of money, it’s a fraction of what many of the leaderboard costs.
Musk says the record was achieved using the stock Plaid from what ships to customers, but the next test will be a test in what the Plaid platform is capable of, with upgraded aero, brakes, tyres and more.
Tesla has now released a video of the experience which you can see below. We see there is a 3rd-party dash positioned on top of the yoke and its interesting to see the delta between this and the Model S display at times.
By way of top speed, the Plaid is rated for 200mph or 322km/h and at the top of the straight, we see the top speed hit 269km/h so I do have questions around why that was down from the maximum possible top speed.